Helen Brooke Taussig (1898 - 1986)

US cardiologist, working in Baltimore and Boston, who founded the field of pediatric cardiology. Notably, she is credited with developing the concept for a procedure that would extend the lives of children born with Tetralogy of Fallot (the most common cause of blue baby syndrome). This concept was applied in practice as a procedure known as the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt. The procedure was developed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, who were Taussig's colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Taussig is also known for her work in banning thalidomide and was widely recognized as a highly skilled physician.

Taussig studied histology, bacteriology, and anatomy at both Harvard Medical School and Boston University, though neither school allowed her to earn a degree. She was particularly discriminated against in her histology class, where she was barred from speaking to her male classmates for fear of "contamination." She applied to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and was accepted as a full-degree candidate. She completed her MD degree in 1927 at Johns Hopkins, where she then remained for one year as a cardiology fellow and for two years as a pediatrics intern.

Dr. Taussig became deaf in the later part of her career. She learned to use lip-reading techniques and hearing aids to speak with her patients, and her fingers rather than a stethoscope to feel the rhythm of their heartbeats and to lip read.

Known for
Recognizing  the cause of "blue baby" syndrome, a cardiopulmonary condition often fatal in newborns.

Developing the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt

Identifying the drug Thalidomide as the cause of a rash of birth defects in Europe, and working to ban the drug

Find more
Wikipedia

In the 2004 HBO movie Something the Lord Made, Taussig was portrayed by Mary Stuart Masterson.